Beach, park and ocean cleanup on 19th of June in Rio

On Tuesday, 19th of June, an international cleanup, combining the efforts of countries’ delegations attending Rio+20 and representatives from local communities, will swipe clean an area between Rio’s most famous beaches – Copacabana and Ipanema.

About 200 participants from all around the world are expected to show up at the 2-hour cleanup action starting from 10am on Tuesday. The cleanup will go from hilltop to the bottom of the Atlantic as the participants will split up and focus their attention to the hillside of Parque Garota de Ipanema, the Arpoador rock and also to Diabo and Arpoador Beaches.

The climate and ocean condition forecast will permit that this cleanup will also enter the ocean and retrieve trash from the underwater realm - the underwater cleanup will be covering the reefs and rocks around Arpoador, led by local scuba and free divers.

The collected trash is sorted and used in creating an art installation on-spot, to communicate the need for urgent global action and cooperation to save our environment from permanent damage.

The cleanup action is titled World Cleanup Rio+20 and is part of civic action series World Cleanup 2012, which is propelled by a civic movement Let’s Do It!, uniting active communities in 94 different countries.

“We are organizing this cleanup to send a message to the whole world that in global issues there are no borders and we need to start real action right now, involving all communities on Earth,” said the Let’s Do It! movement initiator Rainer Nõlvak.

The experienced environmental activist and sustainability consultant Glenn Suba finds it extremely important to broaden the focus of targeting the waste-issues: “It is all connected. Every action or lack of action has a reaction. Our actions on land are having a serious affect on the oceans ecosystems of the world, be it the enormous quantity of plastic waste, sewage, toxic chemicals or CO2 absorbtion that is causing acidification. We need to act more and talk less!” enforced Suba, who will be leading the action on the beach and in the water.

Organizers are emphazising the need for wide cooperation between civic groups, governments, countries and private enterprises. "To improve the way we habit this planet, we also need better choices to be made available to the public - that means sustainable and sustainably produced products and services. This is what we are focusing on in Instituto-E. Everyone and every organisation on Earth can make real changes here and now - this is why we are standing behind this very real action that is bringing together people from all around the world," said one of the hosts of the event, fashion designer and founder of the Instituto-E, Oskar Metsavaht.

There's 200 million tons of illegal garbage lying around the world. People in 94 countries are uniting their efforts this year in global civic action titled “World Cleanup 2012”, consisting of one-day country-wide cleanup events taking place from 24th of March until 25th of September 2012.

The Rio+20 cleanup event will be attended by the founder and director of Brazilian sustainable fashion label Osklen, Mr Oskar Metsavaht, the Honorary Consul of Estonia in Rio de Janeiro. The inspirational speaker at the event will be Mr Rainer Nõlvak, initiator of Let's Do it World.

World Cleanup 2012 is supported by Skype, Outfit7, Estonian Air, Estonian Government and Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group. World Cleanup 2012 action calendar can be found here: http://www.letsdoitworld.org/cleanup_dates